GLANDS OF DESTINY

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20851, 6 October 1937, Page 5

GLANDS OF DESTINY

To the Editor of ’* The Tlmaru Herald.” Sir, —It is a remarkable fact that, although many interesting points have been raised in the course of this discusison, my critic, “MacG. Walmsley,” and I have failed to find a single one on which we are in complete agreement. He rejected, as more or less worthless, all I have to say about the ductless gland and because medical men are now working veritable miracles by the administration of extracts of those glands, he declares they are usurping the function of the Creator, thus implying that man is already a perfect creature living in a perfect environment. A mental glance to the Far East should be sufficient to banish such an idea from his mind; and reflection on the fact that, the same Creative Power that brought man into being has endowed him with sufficient intelligence to enable him to assist in the further perfecting of his own body and mind, should be enough to show him that man is expected to use his faculties in protecting his health, by improving his conditions of life, by reducing infant mortality, by eliminating pestilential diseases, and all those hereditary taints which in former times were ignorantly transmitted from generation to generation, a practice which, of adopted to-day, by a breeder of animals, would be denounced as wasteful, destructive and reprehensible Mr MacG. Walmsley is very reluctant to give the medical profession an?/ credit for its many brilliant discoveries, which have led to the saving of millions of lives, the alleviating of suffering and the banishment of needless pain. I need hardly remind your readers that, the medical profession has gained almost complete control over such diseases as smallpox, bubonic plague, hook worm disease, fluke worm disease, typhoid, diptheria, tetanus, and many other scourges. All this, my opponent may call usurping the function of the Creator; I call it subduing the earth. Those who concentrate on nutrition alone, are apt to conclude that, what they know of that subject is all that need be known, in order to combat disease, and maintain health, unimpaired, indefinitely. But, had this knowledge been so all-sufficient, they, and not the medical profession, would have had the credit of having achieved the mastery over those maladies I have just named. The truth is that, while they can do much good in a very minor way, they cannot cope comprehensibly with malnutrition, because it is an economic and not a medical matter. Take Great Britain for example. According to Sir John Orr’s nutritional survey of that country, one half the population is suffering from malnutrition, not because they do not know' what to eat, when to eat or how to eat, but because they cannot get enough to eat, for the reason that they cannot obtain purchasing power to buy the food they need. Specialists on dietetics then, could do little good in such a country, for their energies would be confined to the overfed, and not to the underfed, who would have to wait for wisdom to dawn in the minds of those who constitute the Government of Great Britain,—l am, etc.,

A. M. PATERSON. Timaru, October 4.